1. Field of the Disclosed Embodiments
This disclosure relates to systems and methods for implementing a scheme to apply commercial web search technologies to biometric matching and identification by converting collected biometric identification information for one or more individual users to text strings.
2. Related Art
The terms “biometrics,” “biometric identification,” and “biometric authentication” refer generally to a series of techniques that are employed to identify humans according to certain physical characteristics or traits. Biometric identification schemes may be used to catalogue databases of physical characteristics and traits for a select user population to be employed in any one of a broad array of identification, access control and/or other security scenarios, including law enforcement identification of one or more persons under surveillance.
Various common biometric identification schemes isolate various individual physical identifiers that represent collectible and differentiable physical characteristics as a means to mark individual humans. Biometric identification schemes may collect various biometric identifiers including, but not limited to, fingerprints, palm prints, hand or foot geometries, iris and retinal scans, facial or overall body mapping, and/or DNA. Biometrics generally focus on substantially static physical traits as opposed to behavioral characteristic monitoring that seeks to isolate trends in bodily movement or bodily response to stimuli including monitoring an individual's pulse rate, pupillary response, physical movement and/or voice.
Biometric identification schemes are gaining wide acceptance as methods to replace traditional access authorization means that generally included (1) presentation of some specified identification card or identifiably coded device (including injectable devices) for visual or electronic inspection; and/or (2) employment of an active or passive challenge/reply system including varying types of passwords, query responses and/or other individual knowledge-based identifiers selected by an individual user or an administrator for identification of the individual user.
The particularly unique nature of individual human biometric identifiers renders their use substantially more reliable in verifying an individual user's identity based on the substantial elimination of the potential to copy, counterfeit or otherwise reproduce the identifying biometric trait. Identification cards or devices can be copied or stolen. Individual passwords or other knowledge-based identifiers can be stolen, replicated or surmised. In this manner unauthorized individuals may be able to gain access to “protected” systems, data, physical spaces or equipment. The relative non-reproducibility of biometric identification information has proven to provide substantial advantages in certain security and access control schemes. This significant advantage is, however, largely balanced by current cumbersome methods for collection of biometric identification information and for the large computer storage overhead required to store detailed biometric identification information. Further, based on its individually unique nature, storage of raw or even descriptive biometric identification information raises privacy and other concerns disadvantageously affecting its use on an even broader scale.
The selection of a particular biometric identification scheme is often driven by the above-mentioned “other” concerns. Books have been written on selection criteria for a particular biometric identifier for use in a particular biometric identification scheme. See, e.g., A. K. Jain et al., Biometrics: Personal Identification in Networked Society, Kluwer Academic Publications (1999) (identifying factors for assessing the suitability of any particular biometric identifier). The widely-accepted factors include: (1) Universality in that every person using a system possesses the particular biometric identifier; (2) Uniqueness in that the biometric identifier is sufficiently differentiable among the population of individual users; (3) Permanence in that the biometric identifier is sufficiently static over time such that recurring updates of baseline or comparative information do not need to be undertaken; (4) Ease of acquisition or measurement in that the biometric identifier is relatively easily (and non-intrusively) collectible; (5) Sortability in that the data by which the acquired biometric identifiers are catalogued may be in a form that facilitates rapid and accurate comparison; (6) Willingness of individuals in the user population to accept the technology; and (7) Robustness against schemes that may be employed to circumvent the biometric identification scheme to gain unauthorized access by replicating a particular biometric identifier for a particular individual user.
Those of skill in the art recognize that no single biometric identifier may sufficiently meet all of the above-enumerated requirements for any particular biometric identification scheme or any particular user population. As a result, combinations of biometric identification schemes may be employed to maximize the advantages while minimizing the disadvantages to a particular organization, entity, system or network requirement.
Generally, individual users may be “enrolled” in a particular biometric identification scheme by collection and recordation of one or more individual biometric identifiers that will be captured and stored in association with identification information/data for the individual users. In use, then, biometric identification information for an individual user seeking access will be detected (normally, with reference to one or more sensors or image acquisition systems) and normalized (if appropriate). Relevant features for comparison may then be extracted from the captured image data and compared with the stored information according to some comparison algorithm or scheme, to authorize or deny the access sought by the individual user.
With the proliferation of biometric identification schemes as preferred techniques for individual identification, security screening and access control, individual entities may piece together systems that were never intended to be combinable into increasingly sophisticated “multi-modal” biometric systems. Multiple sensors or biometric imagers may be employed in what appears to the individual user to be a substantially cooperative manner in an effort to overcome limitations that may be introduced based on over-reliance on any individual biometric identification system modality. Individual biometric identification systems may be limited by the integrity of both the biometric identifier and imaging system and/or sensor used to image the biometric identifier. The overlap provided in the multi-modal systems tends to mediate these limitations based on the improbability that the multiple individual biometric identification systems that are brought together to comprise the multi-modal biometric system will suffer from substantially similar limitations. It should be noted that, in the context of this disclosure, the term “multi-modal biometric systems” and variations of that term will generally be understood to include systems that (1) obtain separate sets of information regarding the same physical trait of an individual, e.g., multiple images of an iris or scans of a same finger; (2) obtain separate information regarding a plurality of physical traits of the individual, e.g., a fingerprint scan and an iris scan; or (3) combinations of the two. The integration between “scans” may be undertaken sequentially, simultaneously, in series and/or in parallel.